邓海洋) busted out a solid run Saturday, January 5th to place third in the men's race at the">376Sixth Xiamen International Marathon#http://www.xmim.org/en/#. First and second places went to Kenyans Kenei Kiprotich, with a winning time of 2:09:49, and Chelimo Elias Kemboi. Deng was less than a minute off the pace, clocking 2:10:43, a significant improvement over the 2:29:37 which took him to 36th place in the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan.

In the women's race, all three podium positions went to Chinese runners. Zhang Yingying finished first with a time of two hours, 22 minutes and 38 seconds, breaking the meet record and improving on her personal best. Bai Xue took the silver in 2:23:27 while Wei Yanan finished third in 2:25:10.

Chinese endurance athletes have traditionally performed better at home than overseas (the notable exception being female runner Zhou Chunxiu, who won the 2007 London Marathon), which raises the possibility of China grabbing some metalwork come the Olympics.

Image: Beijing 2008

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